Russia and Central and Eastern Europe: between Confrontation and Collusion

November 2016

Pavel BAEV

Notes de l’IfriRussie.Nei.Visions 97

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Pavel Baev, “Russia and Central and Eastern Europe: between Confrontation and

Collusion”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 97, November 2016.

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Russie.Nei.Visions

Russie.Nei.Visions is an online collection dedicated to Russia and the other

new independent states (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia,

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and

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Author

Dr Pavel K. Baev is a Research Director and Professor at the Peace

Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow

at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, and an Associate Research

Fellow at Ifri, Paris. After graduating from Moscow State University (MA in

Political Geography, 1979), he worked in a research institute at the USSR

Ministry of Defense; received a PhD in International Relations from the

Institute for US and Canadian Studies, USSR Academy of Sciences, and

then worked in the Institute of Europe, Moscow.

He joined PRIO in October 1992. In 1995-2001, he was the editor of

PRIO’s quarterly journal Security Dialogue, and in 1998-2004 was a

member of the PRIO board. His professional interests include the energy

and security dimensions of Russian-European relations, Russian energy

policy, Russia’s policy in the Arctic, the transformation of the Russian

military, and post-Soviet conflict management in the Caucasus and Greater

Caspian area. He writes a weekly column for the Jamestown Foundation’s

Eurasia Daily Monitor.

“Russia’s Pivot to China Goes Astray: The Impact on the Asia-Pacific

Security Architecture”, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 37, No. 1,

March 2016, p. 89-110.

“Ukraine: a Test for Russian Military Reforms”, Russie.Nei.Reports,

No. 19, May 2015.

“Russia and Turkey Find a Common Cause in Confronting the Specter

of Revolution”, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2014, p. 45-53.

“Russia Gambles on Resource Scarcity» in D. Steven, E. O’Brien,

B. Jones (eds.), The New Politics of Strategic Resources, Washington

DC: Brookings Inst., 2014, p. 245-260.

Abstract

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014, the states of East Central

Europe have become increasingly important targets of Russian economic,

political and military pressure. Russia finds itself in the trajectory of

geopolitical retreat on the Western “front”, and seeks to slow down this

process by mobilizing every economic, political and military asset in East

Central Europe, where various weak points in the European and Atlantic

unity exist—and are typically overestimated by Moscow. Its policy of

exploiting vulnerabilities has been remarkably flexible, relying on energy

ties with some states (Bulgaria and Slovakia), corrupt political ties with

others (the Czech Republic and Hungary) and military pressure on yet

others (Romania and the Baltic trio). None of these means—reinforced by a

furious propaganda campaign—has produced the desired results. There are

signs, as yet inconclusive, that Russia is reducing the reliance on military

force as the most reliable instrument of policy, and curtailing its

provocative activities, which generally corresponds with the inescapable

cuts in its defense spending. Russia’s relations with and capacity for

putting pressure on the states of East Central Europe will depend to a great

extent on the trajectory of the Ukraine crisis. Providing this situation does

not take a cataclysmic turn, there are still possible developments in the

Baltic and the Black Sea “theaters” that could have a strong impact on

Russia’s management of the confrontation with the West. Moscow’s

attempts to reverse its slow but pronounced retreat, however tactically

smart, might generate sharp political crises, and are invariably accelerating

Russia’s decline.

Table of contents

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 5

NEW GEOPOLITICS OF THE “FRONTLINE ZONE” WITH RUSSIA ........ 7

RUSSIAN ENERGY POLICY IN ECE: A BROKEN TOOL? ...................... 10

Gazprom’s pipelines, prices and promises ........................................... 10

Nuclear energy track .............................................................................. 12

RUSSIAN EXPORT OF CORRUPTION AS A POLICY INSTRUMENT ..... 15

From buying friends to cultivating malcontents .................................. 15

The art of propaganda war .................................................................... 18

RUSSIAN “HARD SECURITY” DESIGNS FOR EAST CENTRAL

EUROPE ............................................................................................... 21

Experimenting with military pressure in the Baltic “theatre”............. 21

Post-Crimea reconfiguration of the Black Sea “theatre” ..................... 24

The nuclear threat and the missile defence irritant ............................. 26

CONCLUSION: THE SHIFTING INTERPLAY OF DIRTY POLITICS

AND MILITARY RISKS ........................................................................ 28

Introduction

Three indicative developments at the start of 2016 may give us a clue to the

complicated pattern of interactions across the new fault-line of

confrontation that now divides Europe no less drastically than the Iron

Curtain did back in 1946, when Winston Churchill described it in his

famous Fulton speech. First, in Estonia, three men were convicted for

espionage and supplying information to Russian security services, and that

only a few months after an old-fashioned “spy exchange” on the bridge

connecting the two strikingly dissimilar parts of the former Soviet Union.1

Second, in Bulgaria, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov admitted that Moscow,

using the levers of energy supply, had put pressure on his cabinet to break

ranks with NATO solidarity and not express support for Turkey in its

conflict with Russia.2 Third, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu

announced a directive for building three new army divisions in 2016 in the

“Western direction”.3

These dissimilar turns of events indicate the range and intensity of

new security challenges that the states of East Central Europe—many of

them less than 30 years ago members of the Warsaw Pact or indeed Soviet

republics—face in the new confrontation, which has some features

resembling the Cold War but also has the nature of what, for lack of a

better term, is often described as “hybrid war”. The threat of such

confrontation was looming as NATO deliberated on the Strategic Concept

(adopted at the November 2010 Lisbon summit), which is aimed at

combining the “reset” with Russia with “reassurance” for the allies who are

most exposed to this threat.4 The explosion of the Ukraine crisis in

spring 2014 confirmed the worst predictions of the “alarmists” among

Western security experts, and marked a stark watershed in NATO’s

1. See D. Mardiste, “Estonia Jails Three Men Over Spying for Russian Security Services”, Reuters,

23 February 2016, available at: www.reuters.com; “Russia and Estonia Exchange Spies after

Kohver Row”, BBC News, 26 September 2015, available at: www.bbc.com.

2. See “Bulgaria Was Pressured to Choose between Turkey, Russia—PM”, Novinite.com,

19 January 2016, available at: www.novinite.com.

3. See “Shoigu: Minoborony RF v 2016 godu cformiruet tri novye divizii na zapadnom napravlenii”

[Shoigu: Defence Ministry Will Form Three New Divisions in the Western Direction in 2016],

TASS.ru, 12 January 2016, available at: http://tass.ru.

4. On the link between reset and reassurance, see R. Asmus, S. Czmur, C. Donnelly, A. Ronis,

T. Valacek and K. Wittmann, “NATO, New Allies and Reassurance”, CER Policy Brief, May 2010,

available at: www.cer.org.uk.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

6

relations with Russia. There is space for argument on whether Moscow’s

choice for unleashing the confrontation was preventable, but there are

sound reasons to assume that the aggressive decision-making in the

Kremlin was underpinned by the corrupt-authoritarian evolution of Putin’s

regime. Russia now puts a strong emphasis on the traditional projection of

military power as an instrument of policy, and assumes that West

European states, even when coming together in the NATO sessions, have

neither the will for nor the skill in wielding this instrument, particularly in

support of such “indefensible” positions as Estonia or Latvia.5 At the same

time, Moscow engages in experimenting with various non-traditional

instruments of pressure, from the combination of “black propaganda” and

espionage to the blend of corruption and energy exports.

This report examines the most recent shifts in the pattern of Russia’s

interactions with the states of East Central Europe, which are all NATO and

European Union (EU) members (the Balkan states are touched upon only

tangentially), and aims at evaluating the effectiveness of Moscow’s policies

and outlining the possible revisions of its current course. It starts with

analyzing the energy policy, which used to be central in Russia’s interests

in this region, and continues with a closer look at the export of corruption

and the propaganda campaign, which currently attracts much concern. The

investigation of Russia’s use of various means of military pressure on the

Baltic and the Black Sea “theaters” leads to the conclusion, which focuses

on the risks inherent in the trend of Russian strategic retreat from the area

where it used to have significant influence, but where it is now perceived as

a major security challenge, while its capacity for engagement has badly

eroded.

5. On the reluctance to commit to protecting this NATO vulnerability, see R. Peters, “Defending

the Indefensible: NATO’s Baltic States”, Strategika, Issue 23, 12 May 2015, available at:

www.hoover.org.

New Geopolitics of the

“Frontline Zone” with Russia

At the start of the 2000s, much as through most of the 1990s, Moscow paid

remarkably scant attention to the big group of medium and small states

that constituted the unstructured and incoherent region of East Central

Europe. Russia had many opportunities to influence the transition

processes reshaping the newly born states in the Balkans and in the Baltic,

but preferred to engage in more high-profile dialogues with Germany,

France, Italy and Turkey. There was no committed effort at steering the

debates in these states on the big issue of accession to NATO, and the

expansion of the Alliance, completed in spring 2004, was not seen in the

Kremlin at that time as leading to a significant deterioration in Russia’s

security posture.6

The discourse changed into a forceful argument against further

enlargement around 2008, when Putin addressed the NATO summit in

Bucharest and managed to block the proposition for granting Georgia and

Ukraine the Membership Action Plans. He probably still perceives it as a

major political victory (reinforced by the week-long war with Georgia), but

there is no way to deny the fact that NATO expansion happened on his

“watch” and continues to progress as Montenegro has acceded.7 Putin

wastes no opportunity to condemn this process, and the revised National

Security Strategy approved on 31 December 2015 takes issue with the

strategy of containment executed by the United States and its allies

(Article 12). It elaborates in much detail on the threat from NATO: “The

buildup of the military potential of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) and the endowment of it with global functions pursued in violation

of the norms of international law, the galvanization of the bloc countries'

military activity, the further expansion of the alliance, and the location of

6. One useful analysis from that period is M. Kramer, “NATO, the Baltic States and Russia:

A Framework for Sustainable Enlargement”, International Affairs, vol. 78, No. 4, October 2002,

p. 731-756.

7. See R. Gramer, “The New Thorn in Russia’s Side: Why Moscow Doesn’t Want Montenegro

Joining NATO”, Foreign Affairs, 24 December 2015, available at: www.foreignaffairs.com.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

8

its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders are creating a threat to

national security.” (Article 15).8

As the new post-Crimea confrontation between Russia and the West

evolves and rigidifies, Moscow is paying greater attention to relations with

the states of East Central Europe, constituting a “frontline zone” in this

confrontation, where perceived threats to Russia’s security are encountered

and have to be neutralized. This geopolitical perspective is not

monochrome but has many peculiar nuances, which can be summarized in

three particular features.

First, NATO expansion is seen not as a determined effort of the nine

states of the region (and more in the Balkans) to join, but as a hostile

initiative originating in and driven by US leadership. This “objectification”

makes it possible for Moscow to develop bilateral relations with particular

states notwithstanding their engagement with the Alliance. Thus, for

instance, Putin confirmed that Russia perceived Bulgaria as a “close friend”

and was not “bothered” by its NATO membership.9 Foreign Minister Sergei

Lavrov argued in a recent article that former members of the Warsaw Pact

had not achieved liberation but merely exchanged one “leader” for

another.10

Second, the issue of NATO enlargement is intertwined in Russian

strategic thinking with the problem of the US missile defense system,

identified in the Military Doctrine (approved in December 2014) as one of

the main “external military dangers”.11 Putin’s obvious personal fixation on

this problem determined the heavy priority on the modernization of

strategic forces in the 2020 Armament Program, but it has also become

one of the focal points in the propaganda offensive.12 There was never a

shadow of a doubt in the Russian threat assessment that the deployment of

the “first echelon” of US radar and interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe

was aimed at neutralizing Russian strategic deterrence capabilities, despite

8. Author’s translation from “Ukaz Prezidenta Rossijskoj Federatsii o Strategii natsional’noj

bezopasnosti Rossijskoj Federatsii” [Presidential decree on National Security Strategy of the

Russian Federation], Kremlin.ru, 31 December 2015, available at: http://kremlin.ru.

9. See “Putin: Rossiu ne bespokoit chlenstvo Bolgarii v NATO” [Putin: Russia is Not Bothered by

Bulgaria’s Membership of NATO], RIA Novosti, 17 August 2015, available at: http://ria.ru.

10. He also argues that the choice for expanding NATO is the root cause of the systemic problems

that afflict Russia’s relations with the United States and Europe. See S. Lavrov, “Russia’s Foreign

Policy in a Historical Perspective”, Russia in Global Affairs, 30 March 2016, available

at:http://eng.globalaffairs.ru.

11. It ranks No. 4 in the list of 14 “dangers”; the strengthening and expansions of NATO are

ranked No. 1; see D. Trenin, “Russia’s New Military Doctrine: Should the West be Worried?”

National Interest, 31 December 2014, available at: http://nationalinterest.org.

12. See “How Putin Uses Missile Defence in Europe to Distract Russian Voters”, NATO Review,

29 January 2015, available at: www.nato.int.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

9

the obvious difference between the scale of NATO efforts and the strength

of the Russian land-based missile forces.13

Third, up to late 2013, EU enlargement—unlike NATO expansion—had

not been perceived as a threat to Russia’s interests, but the Euro-Maidan

revolution in Ukraine, orchestrated according to the Kremlin’s assessments

by European politicians and networks, changed that view. Currently, the

EU is seen as a major sanctions-enforcing adversary; this makes it

imperative to focus on weakening it, and the National Security Strategy

(2015) implicitly acknowledges this in Article 16: “Increase of migration

flows from Africa and the Middle East into Europe signified a failure of the

Euro-Atlantic security system built around NATO and the European

Union”.14 This proposition has yet to be proven, and President of the

European Council Donald Tusk argued that “as a direct consequence of the

Russian military campaign … thousands more refugees are fleeing toward

Turkey and Europe”, while US General Philip Breedlove, NATO Supreme

Allied Commander, accused Russia of “weaponizing” migration.15

Moscow tends to overestimate the intensity of centrifugal forces inside

the EU, and seeks to exploit ties with East Central European states in order

to aggravate this crisis, while NATO is typically perceived as a more

cohesive and disciplined organization. One possible change in the big

geopolitical picture, which is seen as a major challenge to Russia’s position

in the Northern/Baltic flank of the European theater, is rapprochement

with and accession to NATO of Sweden and Finland, so Moscow is trying to

combine military pressure with political dissuasion in order to prevent this

development.16

13. For a sober analysis, see S. Pifer, “The Limits of US Missile Defense”, The National Interest,

30 March 2015, available at: http://nationalinterest.org.

14. Op. cit. [8].

15. See G. Baczynska, “EU’s Tusk Says Russian Bombings Make Situation in Syria even Worse”,

Reuters, 9 February 2016, available at: www.reuters.com; G. Dyer, “NATO Accuses Russia of

‘Weaponising’ Immigrants”, Financial Times, 1 March 2016, available at: www.ft.com.

16. See J. Benitez, “The Bully to the East”, US News and World Report, 6 August 2015, available

at: www.usnews.com.

Russian Energy Policy

in ECE: A Broken Tool?

The Kremlin considered export of oil and gas as a highly efficient

direct-action instrument of policy. The fundamental shifts in the

global energy market, which coincided with the development of the

Ukraine crisis, have to all intents and purposes destroyed this

instrumentalization– but this new reality has yet to be recognized.

Putin used to think that he understood the workings of the energy

business better than Western leaders and was eager to press forward

his advantage, but now he is profoundly at a loss, and still clings to

the old game, while having no winning options.

Gazprom’s pipelines, prices and promises

Putin’s big European energy designs in the mid-2000s were aimed

primarily at the major powers, above all Germany, while the smaller

states of East Central Europe (some of them quite severely affected by

the Russian-Ukrainian “gas war” in January 2009) were seen as

targets of secondary importance. The main goal in these designs was

to conquer a greater part of the European market, but the key

strategic proposition was to establish export corridors that

circumvented Ukraine. The paradox of this policy was that acting on

this proposition to all intents and purposes made the achievement of

the goal impossible, while also creating significant differences in

Russian energy policies on the northern and southern flanks of the

“gas offensive”.

In the northern direction, the central project was the Nord

Stream gas pipeline going the length of the Baltic Sea; the persistent

even if ineffectual opposition from Poland convinced Moscow of the

political hostility of this corner of the gas market. It made some half-

hearted attempts to acquire energy infrastructure in the Baltic States

and Poland, but the temptation to punish these “trouble-makers” by

making them pay the highest price for imported gas was too strong, so

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

11

that energy “networking” was curtailed.17 Despite their limited

resources, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have worked hard to create

alternatives to the Russian supply monopoly by building liquefied

natural gas (LNG) terminals and making deals with Norway, so now

they feel far less vulnerable to energy pressure.18 At the same time,

they feel emboldened to criticize Germany for exploring the

possibility of constructing Nord Stream-2, which goes against the EU

diversification guideline and answers only Russian obsession with

excluding Ukraine from its energy ties with Europe.19 Moscow has

essentially given up applying energy pressure on the Baltic trio and

hopes that its better behavior with gas supplies will secure approval

for the Nord Stream-2 project in the bureaucratic maze of the

European Commission; however, a very probable negative decision on

this enterprise could make the desire to punish opponents

irresistible.20

In the southern direction, Russia originally planned to expand

energy ties with quite a few politically friendly states and to build a

network of “special” gas customers. The key project here was the

South Stream, and the peculiar feature of its competition with the

EU-backed Nabucco project was that neither had even a half-solid

economic foundation, and thus both have duly collapsed.21 What

makes this old story still relevant is the odd design of that Russian

mega-project, which instead of one pipeline involved a sequence of

several pipelines, and the fact that Moscow is still seeking to make

this model work.

The main political advantage of such an organizationally

nonsensical project was the opportunity to negotiate separately with

each of the parties along the gas “corridor” and to establish profitable

relations with local partners, which cannot come together to gain

strength sufficient to refuse Gazprom’s offers. Moscow was

deliberately cutting out Romania from its energy designs and focusing

17. See, for instance, “Lithuania Looks for Alternatives to Counter Russia’s High Gas Price”,

EurActiv, 8 July 2013, available at: www.euractiv.com.

18. See C. Oliver and H. Foy, “Poland and Baltic States Set to Sign Deal to Build Gas

Pipeline”, Financial Times, 12 October 2015, available at: www.ft.com.

19. See J. Dempsey, “Germany, Dump Nord Stream 2”, Strategic Europe, 25 January 2016,

available at: http://carnegieeurope.eu.

20. See A. Mineev, “Severnyi potok 2 peregorodili plotinoj. Nuzhen li on Evrope?” [Nord

Stream-2 is Stopped by a Dam. Does Europe Need It?], Novaia Gazeta, 18 April 2016,

available at: www.novayagazeta.ru.

21. See P. Baev and I. Overland, “The South Stream versus Nabucco Pipeline Race”,

International Affairs, vol. 68, No. 5, May 2010, p. 1075-1090.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

12

on Bulgaria, which was seen as historically friendly and usefully

corrupt, until its political class found the determination to reject this

sleazy energy-political stratagem.22 Greece then became the key target

for Russian gas intrigues, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has

played his weak hand remarkably well, using the fruitless talks with

Putin for gaining a better deal in Brussels.23 The Kremlin has sought

to cultivate underhand ties with the Syriza party and is still exploring

options for circumventing Ukraine by the south, but the severe crisis

in relations with Turkey from November 2015 to mid-August 2016

undercut these maneuvers, and the restoration of relations between

the two countries does not seem to underpin a serious action plan.24

Without an operable pipeline plan, Moscow’s attempts to build

an energy foundation for “special relations” with Serbia have

remained inconclusive, so Putin’s displeasure about Belgrade’s

expanding ties with NATO has made little difference.25 The attempts

to pull strings in Slovakia in order to prevent Ukraine from finding an

alternative gas supply were not only quite awkward but backfired,

resulting in the EU-backed arrangement for reverse gas flow from

Germany.26 Overall, Russia cannot find any useful way to harvest

political dividends from its residual energy assets in East Central

Europe; instead, it has to expend political capital in order to preserve

its positions in this important market, and quite often this political

interference turns out to be counter-productive.

Nuclear energy track

One very particular element of Russia’s global energy policy is the

expansion of its nuclear power complex, which is seen in the Kremlin

not only as one of the few areas where Russia possesses advanced and

exportable technologies but also as a major means of establishing and

22. See D. Kalan, “Bulgaria’s Turn: Sofia Gives Moscow Some Attitude”, Foreign Affairs,

9 June 2015, available at: www.foreignaffairs.com.

23. See P. Ghemawat and P. Bastian, “Tsipras and Putin: Does Greece Have a Russia

Option?” The Globalist, 30 July 2015, available at: www.theglobalist.com.

24. On the ties with Syriza, see M. Champion, “Syriza’s Dangerous View of Russia”,

Bloomberg, 3 February 2015, available at: www.bloombergview.com; on the most recent

intrigues, see V. Socor, “Gazprom Promotes Greece-Italy Transit Route to Obstruct

European Corridor”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 3 March 2016, available at:

www.jamestown.org.

25. See P. Himshiashvili, “Putin ponial pozitsiiu Serbii po NATO” [Putin has Understood

Serbia’s Position on NATO], RBC.ru, 10 March 2016, available at: www.rbc.ru.

26. See C. Harrison and Z. Princova, “A Quiet Gas Revolution in Eastern and Central

Europe”, Energy Post, 29 October 2015, available at: www.energypost.eu.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

13

cultivating special political relations. The nuclear energy policy is

strictly centralized and channeled through the state-owned Rosatom

corporation, managed by the very capable Sergey Kiriyenko (former

prime minister), who has set the far-fetched goal of increasing the

number of contracts for building nuclear reactors abroad from the

current 29 to 80 within a few years.27 East Central Europe constitutes

a particular direction in this ambitious expansion.

Most of the ties in the nuclear energy sector go back to the Soviet

era, during which 24 reactors were built in Bulgaria, the Czech

Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia by the

USSR (Romania contracted Atomic Energy Canada Ltd to build the

Cernavoda nuclear plant). The Chernobyl disaster in April 1986

provoked professional and public concerns about reactor safety, so

the Greifswald plant in East Germany was closed in 1990, and

Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia were forced to decommission the

eight reactors of early designs (VVER—the Water-Water Energetic

Reactor and RBMK—the High-Power Channel-type Reactor) as a

condition for joining the EU.28 Russia sought to turn the Chernobyl

page and to comply with the regulations established by the European

Commission in Moscow’s persistent efforts to win competitive

contracts for constructing new reactors, focusing particularly on

Bulgaria and Hungary. In the former, the plan to construct a new

nuclear power plant at Belene was cancelled in September 2012, to

Rosatom’s bitter disappointment, while in the negotiations on

constructing a new reactor at the old Kozloduy plant Westinghouse is

the key partner.29 In Hungary, which operates four Soviet-build

reactors at the Paks nuclear plant, Rosatom succeeded in securing a

contract to construct two more reactors, but the European

Commission has not yet approved the deal, made without an open

tender and with a $US 10 billion loan from Russia.30 The only success

story for Rosatom was the deal on constructing a new nuclear power

plant in Finland (Hanhikivi), finalized in 2015 with the condition of a

27. See I. Armstrong, “Russia is Creating a Global Nuclear Power Empire”, Global Risk

Insights, 29 October 2015, available at: http://globalriskinsights.com.

28. A useful source of data is “Nuclear Power in the World Today”, World Nuclear

Association, January 2016, available at: www.world-nuclear.org.

29. See “Cancelled Russian Nuclear Plant May Cost Bulgaria €1 billion”, EurActiv,

11 September 2012, available at: www.euractiv.com.

30. On the poor prospects for this deal, see M. Samorukov, “Russia and Hungary’s Fruitless

Friendship”, Carnegie.ru, 19 February 2016, available at: http://carnegie.ru.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

14

loan being arranged to cover 75% of the costs (estimated at

€7 billion); the works on the site started in early 2016.31

Russian aggressive marketing of its nuclear power technologies

has yielded rich results in many parts of the world, but in East Central

Europe it has been singularly unsuccessful. While some states (such

as Lithuania) are reluctant to partner with Russia, the most important

obstacle is the policy designed by the European Commission. Russia

is not directly handicapped by this policy, but its way of doing

business, in which political horse-trading is underpinned by corrupt

profit-sharing, is severely curtailed.

31. See “Rosatom nachal raboty po stroitel’stvu AES v Finliandii” [Rosatom has Started the

Construction of a Nuclear Plant in Finland], Lenta.ru, 21 January 2016, available at:

https://lenta.ru.

Russian Export of Corruption

as a Policy Instrument

The long period of record high oil prices in the 2000s brought a massive

inflow of petro-revenues to Russia. Much of this easy money was

redistributed and accumulated under direct control of the Kremlin;

considerable and unaccounted-for financial resources thus became

available for its foreign policy networking. By the start of the present

decade, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky argued from behind bars, the export of

corruption had become the second most important lever for advancing

foreign policy goals, particularly in Europe, after the export of oil and gas.32

From buying friends to cultivating malcontents

The prime market for Russian export of corruption up to the start of the

2010s was Western Europe. While the outflow of dubious private money

was pushing up real-estate prices in London and Nice, lucrative contracts

helped Putin to build special friendships with such peers as Gerhard

Schroeder and Silvio Berlusconi. East Central Europe was overlooked in

that high-level networking, and opportunities to cultivate ties with the old

guard were gone for good. If Putin’s special attention to Germany was

underpinned by a rich variety of clandestine connections with former Stasi

agents and operatives going back to his years in the Dresden office of the

KGB, there is remarkably little evidence that similar connections among

the former members of the Warsaw Pact were exploited for building new

business-political channels of influence.33

The joy of rubbing shoulders with European peers was not quite the

same on Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012, but it was the explosion of

the Ukraine crisis in early 2014 that destroyed it completely—and forced

32. See M. Khodorkovsky, “A Time and a Place for Russia”, The New York Times,

28 January 2010, available at: www.nytimes.com.

33. One of the most prominent cases of cultivating the old Stasi connections involving Matthias

Warnig is examined in K. Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, New York & London,

Simon & Shuster, 2014, p. 50-56. On the significance of the GDR experience for Putin’s

worldview, see also F. Hill & C. G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Washington D.C.,

Brookings Institution Press, 2015, p. 145-147, p. 181-183.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

16

Putin to look for new useful counterparts in East Central Europe.

Previously, Moscow used financial branches in this region mostly as

conduits for transferring money to valuable “friends” in the West; for

instance, the First Czech Russian Bank was used for providing a loan to the

National Front in France.34 Currently, however, they are increasingly used

for clandestine funding of various left-wing and rightist populist parties in

the ECE region.35 There is little hard evidence of direct money transfer

from Moscow to the coffers of such “malcontents”, but their access to

greater financial resources than ever before is underpinning the steady

growth of their impact.36

Putin was not satisfied with recruiting allies in the political fringes and

sought to engage mainstream political leaders in his networks. He saw no

potential allies in Poland and few if any political forces in the three Baltic

states that could qualify as “pro-Russian”, but he discovered interesting

opportunities in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the states that

The Economist labeled as “big, bad Visegrad”.37 He worked carefully on

these opportunities: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was warmly

welcomed to Moscow in June 2015; Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor

Orban received red-carpet treatment in February 2016; Milos Zeman, the

President of the Czech Republic, attended the Victory Day parade in

Moscow on 9 May 2015, and former president Vaclav Klaus was invited to

address the Valdai Club meeting in October 2015.38 They all duly advocated

the lifting of EU sanctions against Russia, but to little avail.

Putin may have developed some personal chemistry with Orban, but

he cannot really see these politicians as his equals.39 The funding

channeled to their campaigns amounts to small change by the standards of

Russian corruption.40 Russian money may have had some influence on the

34. See I. Oliveira, “National Front Seeks Russian Cash for Election Fight”, Politico,

19 February 2016, available at: www.politico.eu.

35. For a useful overview, see “In the Kremlin’s Pocket”, The Economist, 14 February 2015,

available at: www.economist.com.

36. One detailed account of this trend is the report by A. Polyakova and A. Shekhovtsov, “What’s

Left of Europe if the Far Right Has Its Way?”, Issue Brief: Atlantic Council, Washington D .C.,

March 2016, available at: www.atlanticcouncil.org.

37. The key point in that criticism, which was equally applicable to Poland, was the disagreeable

stance on migration; see “Big, Bad Visegrad”, The Economist, 28 January 2016, available at:

www.economist.com.

38. See “Václav Klaus: Valdai’s Debate about Threats: The Threat Is Us”, Valdai Discussion Club,

27 October 2015, available at: http://valdaiclub.com.

39. See T. McNamara, “Is Hungary’s Viktor Orban a Miniature of Vladimir Putin?”, Policy Review,

July 2014, available at: www.policyreview.eu.

40. According to recent research, the total amount of money that was transferred from Russia by

the end of 2014 is estimated at $US 1.3 trillion; see H. Stewart, “Offshore Finance: More than

$12tn Siphoned out of Emerging Countries”, The Guardian, 8 May 2016, available at:

www.theguardian.com.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

17

outcome of the elections in Slovakia in March 2016, but Fico has

confidently secured the outcome he was aiming for.41 In Serbia, for that

matter, the anticipated and well-funded success of the pro-Russian

nationalists in the April 2016 parliamentary elections failed to materialize

as the pro-EU coalition of Prime Minister Vucic scored a solid victory.42 It

is probable that the revelations of Russian “sponsorship” and the strong

demand for greater financial transparency in the aftermath of the “Panama

Papers” scandal will squeeze Russian political networks. Putin, indeed,

reacted extremely nervously to this scandal, despite the absence of any

evidence of his personal involvement in the money laundering.43 All the

dubious offshore transactions have been executed by his courtiers and

confidants, which earned Russia first place in the “crony capitalism”

index.44

The Kremlin works on the assumption that these small Central

European states are major contributors to the profound crisis that has

eroded the EU institutions and is threatening to paralyze decision-making

in the European Commission.45 There is a no small dose of wishful thinking

in these calculations; many mainstream experts in Moscow are eager to

predict the inevitable breakdown of the EU, weakened by unsustainable

financial policies and overwhelmed by the inflow of migrants.46 In reality,

Orban and Fico and other “friends of Putin” in the region (as well as

Tsipras in Greece) are not interested at all in breaking the EU apart; they

are seeking to play on their ties with the Kremlin in order to secure better

conditions in some particular deals in Brussels, and to deflect criticism of

their mistreatment of opposition and media. In that, they are more

successful than Putin is with his strategy.

41. See L. Ragozin, “Putin’s Hand Grows Stronger as Right-Wing Parties Advance in Europe”,

Bloomberg, 15 March 2016, available at: www.bloomberg.com.

42. See “Pro-Russians Set for Comeback in Serbia”, EurActiv, 21 April 2016, available at:

www.euractiv.com.

43. See, for instance, M. Leiva, “Putin nazval ‘informatsionnye ataki’ na sebia reaktsiej na

ukreplenie Rossii” [Putin Explained the ‘Information Attacks’ on Him as Response to Russia’s

New Strength], RBC.ru, 25 April 2016, available at: www.rbc.ru.

44. See “Our Crony-Capitalism Index: The Party Winds Down”, The Economist, 5 May 2016,

available at: www.economist.com.

45. See D. Frants, “Sammit ES stolkniot Vostochnuiu Evropu s Zapadnoj” [EU Summit will See a

Clash Between Eastern and Western Europe], Nezavisimaya gazeta, 18 February 2016, available

at: www.ng.ru.

46. See V. Inozemtsev, “Mantra dlia neudachnikov” [Mantra for the Losers], The New Times,

16 March 2016, available at: www.newtimes.ru.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

18

The art of propaganda war

A new feature of Russia’s policy toward East Central Europe and the West

more generally is the massive public relations campaign, which combines

the traditional methods of Soviet-style propaganda and the new channels

of information circulation. Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, this

campaign has reached such an unprecedented level of intensity and

acquired so vicious a character that it can be characterized as a key

dimension of Russia’s “hybrid war” on the European theater.

The urgency of countering this offensive has been duly recognized, and

NATO is focusing its response with the newly created Strategic

Communications (StratCom) Center of Excellence in Riga.47 Plenty of

attention is being given to the risks generated by Russian propaganda, yet

several features may be usefully illuminated.

First, Moscow has targeted primarily, through its state-controlled TV

channels, the Russian-speaking communities in Europe. Germany has been

the prime focus of this campaign, which was supplemented by other means

of outreach to the numerous (1.5–2.0 million) and politically active ex-

pats.48 No less important foci were the Russian-speaking communities in

Estonia and Latvia, where Moscow expected to stir long-existing

grievances.49 It has achieved remarkably little success, and nothing

resembling a proverbial “fifth column” has been mobilized in either of

these two front-line states, as Nils Ušakovs, the young mayor of Riga, keeps

asserting.50

Second, special efforts have been concentrated on influencing public

opinion in the several states (Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia) that

are considered “friendly” to Russia due to historic or “civilizational”

reasons. In addition to Russian TV, special programs in the respective

languages (that happen to be Slavic) aim at fanning anti-American

sentiments and accentuating irritation against EU policies, including fiscal

austerity and especially migration. Bulgaria has been the prime target for

47. See R. Emmott, “NATO Looks to Combat Russia’s ‘Information Weapon’: Document”, Reuters,

27 January 2016, available at: www.reuters.com. Activities and publications of StratCom are

presented on its website, available at: www.stratcomcoe.org.

48. One extensive examination is M. Amann et al., “The Hybrid War: Russia’s Propaganda

Campaign Against Germany”, Der Spiegel, 5 February 2016, available at: www.spiegel.de.

49. See V. Veebel, “Russian Propaganda, Disinformation, and Estonia’s Experience”, FPRI

E-Notes, October 2015, available at: www.fpri.org; C. Ranks, “Tret’ia mirovaia v Pribaltike:

mozhet li Latgaliia stat’ vtorym Krymom” [World War III in the Baltic States: Can Latgale Become

the Second Crimea?], Carnegie Moscow Center, 11 March 2016, available at: http://carnegie.ru.

50. See Sh. Walker, “Riga mayor: ‘I'm a Russian-speaking Latvian and patriot of my country’”,

The Guardian, 15 June 2015, available at: www.theguardian.com.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

19

this campaign; a Bulgarian Defense Ministry report concluded that the

Russian information war was “directly attacking the national democratic

values, spirit and will.”51 Yet the yield from these efforts is far from

impressive; as Ivan Krastev argues, “while Bulgarians sympathize with

Russians, it is precisely because of their familiarity with Moscow’s ways

that they do not consider the Putin regime as a model to be followed”.52

Third, besides the TV channels, the new opportunities of social

networks have been explored and used for adding power to the propaganda

offensive, in particular by hiring so-called “trolls”, who swarm popular

websites with aggressive commentary. Investigations into the workings of

these “troll factories” expose journalists to vicious personal attacks.53 Such

crude abuse of the information space (often combined with hacker attacks,

the most damaging of which targeted Ukraine’s power grid) is generally

counter-productive.54 Some states of East Central Europe are eager to

develop joint cyber-defense capabilities and some feel compelled to do it,

while Sweden was prompted to join NATO’s STRATCOM Center of

Excellence.55

Fourth, the propaganda activities are often linked with both

traditional espionage and new kinds of clandestine activities closely tied to

the export of corruption.56 In East Central Europe, Poland and the three

Baltic states are at the top of the list of destinations for this spy-work, and

the newly established NATO Counter-Intelligence Center of Excellence in

Poland, whatever about the unnecessarily rough start to its work,57 is

intended to deny Russia the advantage of having both greater experience

and resources.

In the spring of 2014, the forcefulness and aggressiveness of the

Russian propaganda/espionage offensive took by surprise the EU, NATO

and most states of East Central Europe, but gradually they have jointly

51. See “Bulgaria Accuses Russia of Waging ‘Information War’”, Balkan Insight, 29 August 2014,

available at: www.balkaninsight.com.

52. See I. Krastev, “What Central Europe Really Thinks about Russia”, New York Times,

27 April 2015, available at: www.nytimes.com.

53. See N. Miller, “Finnish Journalist Jessikka Aro's Inquiry into Russian Trolls Stirs Up a

Hornet's Nest”, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 2016, available at: www.smh.com.au.

54. See H. Kuchler and N. Buckley, “Hackers Shut down Ukraine Power Grid”, Financial Times,

5 January 2016, available at: https://next.ft.com; T. Fox-Brewster, “‘State Sponsored’ Russian

Hacker Group Linked to Cyber Attacks on Neighbours”, The Guardian, 29 October 2014, available

at: www.theguardian.com.

55. See G. O’Dwyer, “Sweden Seeks to Join NATO Info-War Agency”, Defense News,

1 November 2015, available at: www.defensenews.com.

56. See M. Calabresi, “Inside Putin’s East European Spy Campaign”, Time, 7 May 2014, available

at: http://time.com.

57. See A. Chapman, “Why Did Poland Raid a NATO-Linked Training Center?”, The Daily Beast,

20 December 2015, available at: www.thedailybeast.com.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

20

gathered the will and the resources for putting together an expanding set of

counter-measures. At the same time, given the economic crisis, Moscow

must reduce funding for its propaganda machine. The balance of forces in

the information warfare is thus shifting against Russia to such a degree

that some astute commentators are warning against replicating the

hostility of the Kremlin’s political discourse and arguing that “the

debasement of much public discussion of Russia does us a disservice”.58

58. See M. Galeotti, “By Matching Moscow’s Paranoia, the West Plays into Putin’s Hands”,

The Guardian, 14 March 2016, available at: www.theguardian.com.

Russian “Hard Security”

Designs for East Central

Europe

With all the attention on energy matters and all the manipulations of

corrupt networks, what the Russian leadership currently perceives as the

most reliable instrument of policy is military power. Indeed, the rather

unconventional character of the Russian “hybrid war” takes shape around

the main trait—the readiness to project military force and to accept the

risks associated with such old-fashioned aggressiveness. From this

strategic perspective, the patchy region of East Central Europe is

disaggregated into two “theaters”, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, where

Russia has usable options for projecting military power, and the middle

zone between, which includes Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary

(where in the 1960s–1980s large groupings of Soviet forces were

stationed), which is separated from Russia by the Ukrainian “buffer”.

Experimenting with military pressure in the Baltic theater

Russia’s capacity for and propensity to project military force toward

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was already a serious concern at the start of

this decade, when these countries insisted on planning collective responses

to Russia’s military modernization, but it was the shockingly efficient

operation of annexing Crimea that intensified these concerns into a top

priority. The BBC documentary “World War Three: Inside the War Room”

generated strong public awareness of these esoteric scenarios and

produced sharp emotional reactions both in the Baltic States and in

Russia.59 The Kremlin’s willingness to engage in a real military conflict

with NATO will hopefully not materialize, but the impact of its

brinksmanship is real, and the risk of only partly controllable escalation

will continue to influence political developments in the Baltic region.

59. See A. Chapman, “Latvia: Third World War—Inside the War Room”, Baltic Review,

5 February 2016, available at: http://baltic-review.com; A. Shirokorad, “Zlaia kinoshka pro vojnu

ponaroshku” [An Evil Film about a Phoney War], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie,

12 February 2016 available at: http://nvo.ng.ru.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

22

Moscow demonstratively increased the scale of provocative military

activities in the Baltic theater in parallel with the development of violent

conflict in eastern Ukraine in summer 2014, quite possibly seeking to

divert Western attention from the Donbass battlefields. The main

instrument for these sustained provocations was the Air Force (which was

not engaged in the operations in Ukraine), while the Baltic Fleet remained

relatively passive (the excited reports about a submarine spotted in the

Stockholm archipelago never had any credibility).60 Russia also staged

large-scale military exercises in the Western and Central military districts

aimed at establishing the fact that it could conduct strategic operations at

short notice despite being engaged in protracted and inconclusive battles in

Donbass.61 What is striking in the dynamics of these activities is that, since

the launch of Russian military intervention in Syria in late September 2015,

the intensity of demonstrations of air power in the Baltic theater has

sharply decreased, and the snap exercises in March 2016 as well as the

strategic command and staff exercises “Caucasus-2016” involved only the

troops in the Southern military district.62 However, the aggressive mock

attacks on USS Donald Cook and intercepts of USAF RC-135 surveillance

aircraft in mid-April 2016, and the violation of Estonian and Lithuanian

airspace in September 2016 might signify a new surge in Russian

provocations.63

This analysis suggests that Moscow’s sustained (but effectively

discontinued) effort at putting military pressure on the vulnerable NATO

front-line in the Baltic region has been far from successful, and even

counter-productive. One aim of this effort could have been to expose

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as “free riders”, who are not prepared to do

anything to upgrade their defense capabilities and who merely exploit

“Russophobic” discourse to gain attention and aid from Germany and the

USA. These states, however, have managed to make a strong case for the

need to build capacity for “deterrence by denial” and to demonstrate their

60. One timely analysis was Th. Frear, L. Kuelsa and I. Kearns, “Dangerous Brinksmanship: Close

Military Encounters Between Russia and the West in 2014”, ELN Report, 10 November 2014,

available at: www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org. See also the follow-up report: Th. Frear,

L. Kuelsa and I. Kearns, “Russia-West Dangerous Brinkmanship Continues”, 12 March 2015,

available at: www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org.

61. One useful Russian assessment is A. Golts, “Bolshaia repetitsiia bolshoj vojny” [Big Rehearsal

of a Big War], Ezhednevny zhurnal, 24 March 2015, available at: http://ej.ru; an informative

overview is I. Kearns, L. Kuelsa and Th. Frear, “Preparing for the Worst: Are Russian and NATO

Military Exercises Making War in Europe more Likely?”, ELN Report, 12 August 2015, available

at: www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org.

62. See A. E. Kramer, “Russia Announces Surprise Military Drills in South”, The New York Times,

8 February 2016, available at: www.nytimes.com.

63. See P. Felgenhauer, “Russian Jets Fly Close to US Ship and Recon Aircraft Over Baltic Sea”,

Eurasia Daily Monitor, 21 April 2016, available at: www.jamestown.org.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

23

readiness to mobilize the necessary resources.64 The political crisis in

Poland inflicted some damage on this collective effort, resulting in the

resignation of several prominent generals, but there is no evidence of any

involvement of Russian special services in that “purge”.65

Another possible aim of Russia’s power demonstrations was to convey

the impression that the three Baltic states were “indefensible”, so that it

made no strategic sense for the allies to reinforce this pre-determined

failure. This impression was confirmed by the controversial RAND war-

gaming study, which elaborated the scenario of an unstoppable advance of

Russian tank columns toward Tallinn and Riga.66 However, instead of

accepting the futility of attempts to build a credible defense force for this

exposed front-line, NATO has refused to compromise on its integrity and

concentrated on increasing its options in partnership with Sweden and

Finland.67 There is, obviously, still much work to do before the Very High

Readiness Joint Task Force becomes a combat-capable unit, but what is

essential to emphasize here is that Moscow’s demonstrations of

deployment of overwhelming force involve much strategic deception. The

operation that resulted in a swift occupation of Crimea cannot be a

reference point for the Baltic theater; it was a special and irreproducible

case. For that matter, the stationing of the S-400 surface-to-air missiles in

Kaliningrad and the trial deployment there of a brigade of the Iskander

(SS-26 Stone) short-range ballistic missiles are intended to impress the US

and NATO with the “Anti-Access/Area Denial” (A2/AD) capabilities.

However, in fact, this isolated “bastion” remains highly vulnerable.68 One

singularly striking departure from common strategic sense was the order of

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to transform three brigades into full-size

divisions in the Western “direction”, which corresponds neither to the

reality of a shrinking pool of conscripts nor to the necessity to reduce

64. One convincing examination of the shift to the “deterrence by denial” strategy is

A. Weiss Mitchell, “A Bold New Baltic Strategy for NATO”, The National Interest, 6 January 2016,

available at: http://nationalinterest.org.

65. One informed Russian commentary is S. Ivanov, “Pol’sha izbavliaetsia ot sovetskikh

generalov” [Poland Dismisses Soviet Generals], Gazeta.ru, 11 March 2016, available at:

www.gazeta.ru.

66. The study is available at D. A. Shlapak and M. Johnson, “Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s

Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltic”, RAND Research Report RR-1253-A, 2016,

available at: www.rand.org. See also D. A. Shlapak and M. W. Johnson, “Outnumbered,

Outranged, and Outgunned: How Russia Defeats NATO”, War on the Rocks, 21 April 2016,

available at: http://warontherocks.com.

67. A useful examination of these options is A. Wieslander, “Who will Defend the Baltics? NATO,

the US and Baltic Sea Security”, NATO Source, Atlantic Council, 7 March 2016, available at:

www.atlanticcouncil.org.

68. See G. Howard, “Lithuania’s Key Role in Countering Russian A2/AD Challenge to the Baltic”,

Delfi, 2 March 2016, available at: http://en.delfi.lt.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

24

defense spending, so that the real combat-readiness of the army grouping

may actually decrease.69

Overall, Russian military pressure has failed to produce fissures within

the Atlantic solidarity, or to demoralize the Baltic states directly subjected

to it, or to isolate them from the more risk-averse and budget-conscious

European allies. The reduction of this pressure due to the demands for

sustaining the military intervention in Syria provided for NATO a useful

pause, which allowed the allies to assess the true scope of the threat and to

prepare contingency plans, which were finalized at the Warsaw summit in

July 2016.

Post-Crimea reconfiguration of the Black Sea theater

Russia’s August 2008 war with Georgia brought military-security matters

into the focus of debates on the strategic profile of the wider Black Sea

region, yet only briefly; until spring 2014, this theater had been largely

neglected in NATO strategic planning. The shockingly effective military

operation leading to the swift annexation of Crimea counteracted that

neglect, and made it imperative for the Alliance to reassess the military

balance on this isolated flank.70 Russia wasted no time in building up a

powerful military grouping on the peninsula, making use of old Soviet

infrastructure that had degraded over 25 years but was quickly made

serviceable with minimal investment. By the end of 2014, the initial phase

of remilitarization of Crimea had been completed, and Moscow gained

confidence that its new possession was secure.71

During 2015 and early 2016, less effort and attention was devoted to

increasing the Crimean grouping beyond the initial phase, and Russian

military experts were left entertaining their fantasy of the “unsinkable

aircraft carrier”.72 The Black Sea Fleet is being strengthened with three

Varshavyanka-class (Project 636) diesel-electric submarines, with three

more to be delivered in 2016-2017, to form a new division, which will be

69. This point was made in A. Golts, “Novye divizii poniziat boegotovnost’” [New Divisions Will

Degrade Combat Readiness], Ezhednevny zhurnal , 13 January 2016, available at: http://ej.ru.

70. See S. Blank, “The Black Sea and Beyond”, Proceedings, US Naval Institute, vol. 14, No. 10,

October 2015, available at: www.usni.org.

71. For an upbeat summary, see A. Chaplygin, “Rossijskaia armiia v Krymu god spustia: sil’naia i

sovremennaia” [Russian Army in Crimea One Year Later: Powerful and Modern], RIA Novosti,

13 March 2015, available at: http://ria.ru.

72. See for instance, A. Luzan, “Krym kak nepotopliaemyj avianosets” [Crimea as an Unsinkable

Aircraft Carrier], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie , 24 July 2015, available at: http://nvo.ng.ru.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

25

based not in Crimea but in Novorossiysk.73 The plan to add to the Black Sea

Fleet a division of six Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates (Project 11356M)

has had to be cancelled, however, because the gas-turbine engines for these

ships were produced in Ukraine (Zorya-Mashproekt plant in Nikolaev), so

even the three ships that have been launched cannot be properly serviced.74

The Russian high command is now aware, apparently, that the logistics for

the military forces in Crimea, where every parcel of supplies has to be

delivered by sea, is extremely complicated.

Moscow was eager to challenge in a provocative and risky manner the

US Navy ships showing flag in the Black Sea, but refrained from any

demonstrations against the Bulgarian and Romanian navies or airspace.75

Nor have the air and naval assets deployed in Crimea been used to put

pressure on Ukraine, even during the escalation of fighting around

Mariupol in late summer 2014. Up until late November 2015, Russia had

been particularly circumspect about Turkish maritime interests and

activities in the Black Sea, seeking to emphasize that the special strategic

partnership with this neighbor was more important than its membership in

NATO. Even during the crisis in bilateral relations caused by the downing

of a Russian bomber in Syria by a Turkish fighter on 24 November 2015,

Moscow preferred not to resort to any military demonstrations in the Black

Sea.76 The possibility of Turkey closing the Straits for the Russian Navy, in

full accordance with the clause on “direct military threat” in the Montreux

Convention (1936) and with the full support of NATO, was obviously taken

very seriously.77

Overall, Russia certainly possesses a very strong, perhaps even

dominant military position in the Black Sea, and can effectively interdict

maritime and air traffic along the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania, using

the partially upgraded military infrastructure in Crimea. At the same time,

Russia has been visibly reluctant to experiment with projecting military

power in this region, unlike in the Baltic theater; thus, for instance, the

73. See J. Bender, “Russia’s Black Sea Submarine Fleet is Getting a Serious Upgrade”, Business

Insider, 14 July 2015, available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com.

74. See N. Novichkov, “Russia Hoping to Export Three Sanctions-Hit Admiral Grigorovich-Class

Frigates”, IHS Jane’s Navy International, 15 October 2015, available at: www.janes.com.

75. One useful brief account is G. Jean, “Russian Su-24s Make Multiple Passes by USN Destroyer

in the Black Sea”, IHS Jane’s 360, 2 June 2015, available at: www.janes.com.

76. One exception was the appearance of a soldier with a portable surface-to-air missile on board

the Caesar Kunikov large landing ship when going through the Bosphorus; see “Turkish FM Slams

Russia’s Missile ‘Provocation’ in Bosphorus”, Hurriyet Daily News, 6 December 2015, available

at: www.hurriyetdailynews.com.

77. A Russian view on the legality of such a closure is I. Remeslo, “Kontrol’ nad prolivami Bosfor i

Dardanelly i nevyuchennye uroki istorii” [Control Over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits and

the Unlearned History Lessons], RIA Novosti, 27 November 2011, available at: http://ria.ru.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

26

deployment of US F-22 fighters to Romania in April 2016 was left

unanswered.78 During the “Caucasus-2016” maneuvers in September 2016,

Moscow had no real choice but to intercept the U.S. reconnaissance planes,

but the Crimean scenario elaborated for this exercise was merely defensive.

This self-restraint means that the assessments that focus on the sum total

of capabilities and conclude that Bulgaria and Romania are as much under

threat as Estonia and Latvia could be seriously off-target.79 In fact, Moscow

is concerned about NATO gaining superiority on this flank.80 The need to

sustain military intervention in Syria (even if in a reduced format) makes

Russia even more cautious in asserting its position of power in the Black

Sea theater, with the possible exception of Georgia.

The nuclear threat and the missile defense irritant

For the states of East Central Europe, one crucial element of their security

posture vis-à-vis Russia is the threat of non-strategic nuclear weapons. At

the same time, one of the major strategic issues for Russia has been the

development of the US missile defense system and its European “echelon”,

which is supposed to be deployed primarily in East Central Europe. This

interplay of immediate and true risks (about which little data is available)

and the perceived dangers from reciprocal plans (that have been revised

many times) generates much political tension, which is often manipulated

to serve particular expediencies.

Controversy around the US “missile shield” goes back to the

Gorbachev-Reagan era, but has acquired new content since the breakdown

of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972), at the initiative of

President George W. Bush in December 2001. President Putin has referred

to the US unilateral withdrawal on so many occasions that it is fair to

characterize him as having a strategic obsession about the matter.81 This

fixation of the Commander-in-Chief determined the top priority given to

the modernization of strategic forces in the 2020 Armament Program

78. See O. Pawlyk, “F-22 Jets are in Romania to Keep Tabs on Russia’s Black Sea Antics”,

Air Force Times, 25 April 2016, available at: www.airforcetimes.com.

79. One example is J. Bugajski and P. B. Dolan, “Black Sea Rising: Russia’s Strategy in Southeast

Europe”, CEPA Report, February 2016, available at: http://cepa.org.

80. These concerns are spelled out in V. Mukhin, “Nuzhen zaslon v sektore ugroz” [We Need a

Counter in the Threatened Sector], Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 22 January 2016, available

at: http://nvo.ng.ru. See also “MID dopustil otvetnye mery pri sozdanii flotilii NATO v Chernom

More” [Foreign Ministry Hints on Counter Measures in case NATO Squadron is Deployed to the

Black Sea], RBC.ru, 27 April 2016, available at: www.rbc.ru.

81. See S. Pifer, “Putin’s Nuclear Saber-Rattling: What is He Compensating For?”, Order from

Chaos, 17 June 2015, available at: www.brookings.edu.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

27

(which remains in force despite the severe shortage of funding) and the

reorganization of command structures, in which the air-defense and space

forces were integrated with the air force in one Air-Space Forces

command.82 It has also driven a series of back-and-forth steps that were

supposed to “neutralize” the US assets deployed in East Central Europe.

The deployment of Iskander (SS-26 Stone) short-range ballistic missiles to

Kaliningrad was promised a number of times and tried during several

exercises, invariably attracting negative attention in Poland.83 The

deployment of long-range Tu-22M3 (Backfire) to Crimea was announced

as a direct response to the stationing of US missile defense assets in

Romania, but then disavowed.84 There has been much speculation about

delivering and storing nuclear warheads of various kinds in Crimea, but

nothing definite has taken place.85

This ambivalence originates in the combination of strategic bargaining

with the USA and political intrigues in the East Central Europe aimed at

turning public opinion against partaking in the NATO missile defense

system. Moscow has never believed that huge investment in building this

system could be justified by a hypothetical threat from Iran, and has

assumed that, in the East European states, the Iranian option cannot be

taken seriously. By playing on the fear factor, the Kremlin has expected to

amplify the reluctance in Romania, the Czech Republic and even Poland to

contribute to the project, which cannot in any foreseeable future provide

effective defense against Russian missiles but could make them targets for

preventive, perhaps even nuclear, strikes.86 In synch with the propaganda

campaign, this accentuation of threats was also expected to augment the

anti-American sentiments still present in the “new Europe”, but the net

result has been rather the opposite.87 Russia is increasingly seen as a

dangerous and unpredictable neighbor, so that only closer ties with the

USA and NATO could bring protection against its military escapades.

82. For a brief evaluation, see A. Golts, “Vozdushno-kosmicheskie sily nuzhny tol’ko generalam”

[Air-Space Forces are Good Only for Generals], Ezhednevny zhurnal, 4 August 2015, available at:

http://ej2015.ru.

83. See T. Weselowsky, “Kaliningrad, Moscow’s Military Trump Card”, RFE/RL, 18 June 2015,

available at: www.rferl.org.

84. See I. Petrov, “Tu-22M3 ne budut razmeshchat’ v Krymu” [Tu-22M3 will not be Deployed to

Crimea], Rossijskaya gazeta, 27 July 2015, available at: http://rg.ru.

85. See O. Odnokolenko, “Krym mozhet stat’ raketno-iadernym” [Crimea Could Become Nuclear-

Missile], Nezavisimaya gazeta, 2 June 2015, available at: www.ng.ru.

86. See R. Gramer, “How Should NATO Counter Putin’s Nuclear Threats?”, Newsweek,

13 July 2015, available at: http://europe.newsweek.com.

87. A recent Gallup opinion poll shows that 69% of Poles, 58% of Estonians, and 57% of

Romanians see Russia as the main threat, while 14% of Bulgarians identify the USA as the biggest

threat; see N. Esipova and J. Ray, “Eastern Europeans, CIS Residents See Russia, US as threats”,

Gallup World, 4 April 2016, available at: www.gallup.com.

Conclusion: The Shifting

Interplay of Dirty Politics

and Military Risks

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014, the states of East Central

Europe have become increasingly important targets of Russian economic,

political and military pressure. Finding itself involved in new confrontation

with the West and facing an unexpected unity of EU and NATO member

states in enforcing sanctions, Moscow has been looking for weak links in

these collective efforts. Its policy of exploiting vulnerabilities has been

remarkably flexible, relying on energy ties with some states (Bulgaria and

Slovakia), corrupt political ties with others (Czech Republic and Hungary),

and military pressure on yet others (Romania and the Baltic trio). None of

these means— reinforced by a furious propaganda campaign —has

produced the desired results.

The usefulness of energy levers has been undermined by the shifts on

the global and European energy markets that have granted greater leverage

to buyers; Russia’s capacity for providing credit and buying assets has been

curtailed by the crisis in its finances; the dividends from the export of

corruption have been seriously reduced by several high-profile

investigations; and the military pressure has been effectively countered by

NATO’s determined stance. It may be assumed that, in the immediate

future, Moscow will not gain any additional leverage in this region and is

nearly certain to experience a further contraction in its influence.

There are signs, as yet inconclusive, that Russia is reducing reliance on

military force as the most reliable instrument of policy and cutting down

on its provocative activities—which generally correspond to the inescapable

cuts in its defense spending. Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian politicians

are typically pressing for an even tougher position to be taken against

Russian aggressiveness, rather than seeking to engage Moscow in tensions-

reducing dialogue.88

Much in Russia’s relations with and capacity for putting pressure on

the states of East Central Europe will depend upon the trajectory of the

88. See L. Linkevicius, “Enough: NATO Should Stop Feeding the Russian Troll”, Politico,

5 March 2016, available at: www.politico.eu.

Russia and East Central Europe Pavel Baev

29

Ukraine crisis. Moscow is manipulating the intensity of hostilities in the

Donbass war zone, but its main working assumption is that the series of

quarrels in the domestic political arena would aggravate the economic

crisis in Ukraine— and accentuate the feeling of “Ukraine fatigue” in the

EU.89 Providing that this crisis situation does not take a cataclysmic turn,

possible developments in the Baltic and the Black Sea theaters could still

have a strong impact on Russia’s management of the confrontation with

the West. In the Black Sea area, risks are mainly related to the future of

relations between Russia and Turkey and the Turkish policy in Syria. In the

Baltic area, a key trend is the closer military cooperation between NATO

and Sweden and Finland, which Russia seeks to block, but every stern

warning it issues propels the two states to take new steps forward. The

question of joining the Alliance might acquire a practical character, and

that would signify an improvement in the geostrategic vulnerability of the

three Baltic states—and would be seen in Moscow as a major deterioration

of its position.

Russia finds itself in the process of geopolitical retreat on the Western

“front”, and seeks to slow down this process by mobilizing every economic,

political and military asset in East Central Europe, where various weak

points in the European and Atlantic unity exist—and are typically

overestimated by Moscow. Attempts to reverse this retreat, however

tactically smart, risk provoking acute political crises, and are invariably

accelerating Russia’s decline.

89. See A. Moshes, “Will Europe Blink First on Ukraine?”, PONARS Eurasia Memo No. 422,

March 2016, available at: www.ponarseurasia.org.

The Latest Publications

of Russie.Nei.Visions

V. Inozemtsev, “Russia's Economic Modernization: The Causes of a

Failure”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 96, September 2016.

V. Likhachev, “The Far Right in the Conflict between Russia and

Ukraine”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 95, July 2016.

D. Trenin, “Russia’s Asia Strategy: Bolstering the Eagle’s Eastern

Wing”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 94, June 2016.

A. Shumilin, “Russia's Diplomacy in the Middle East: Back to

Geopolitics”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 93, May 2016.

B. Lo, “The illusion of convergence—Russia, China, and the BRICS”,

Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 92, February 2016.

L. Bisson, “Russia’s Immigration Policy: New Challenges and Tools”,

Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 91, January 2016.

L. Polyakov, “‘Conservatism’ in Russia: Political Tool or Historical

Choice?”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 90, December 2015.

I. Timofeev, E. Alekseenkova, “Eurasia in Russian Foreign Policy:

Interests, Opportunities and Constraints”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 89,

December 2015.

I. Bunin, A. Makarkin, “Russia: Business and State”,

Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 88, November 2015.

M. Korostikov, “Leaving to Come Back: Russian Senior Officials and

the State-Owned Companies”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 87, August 2015.

V. Milov, “Russia’s New Energy Alliances: Mythology versus Reality”,

Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 86, July 2015.

I. Delanoë, “The Kurds: A Channel of Russian Influence in the Middle

East?”, Russie.Nei.Visions, No. 85, June 2015.

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